This invention relates to location-based game systems.
Virtual Reality (VR) systems have been developed in which a user is provided with a non-transparent head-mounted display. This display provides images to the user such that the user is immersed in a virtual, alternate reality. A user cannot see his/her physical environment while immersed in such a virtual, alternate reality. Accordingly, VR systems are deficient because a user cannot easily move around a physical environment while immersed in the virtual reality because a user cannot see his/her physical environment. If a user begins to physically move in his/her physical environment without being able to see his/her physical environment then the user may trip, or bump into, a physical object (e.g., a rock or chair).
As a result of the mobility constraints of traditional VR systems, a user is traditionally placed on a platform that is surrounded by padded safety rails. A user cannot move outside of this protected platform and moves through the virtual, alternate reality created by the VR system through the use of a manual joystick. Such a VR system is deficient because it severely limits the way that a user may interact with the virtual, alternate reality provided by the VR system.
Traditional manual controls occasionally have a primary control and a number of supplemental controls. Such a primary control occasionally takes the form of a joystick. The primary control occasionally provides the main control signal to a video game. Traditionally, the main control signal controls the location of a video game character in a virtual world. Such controls, however, are deficient because the controls require unnatural user movement to generate the primary control signal. It is therefore desirable to provide a primary control device that does not require unnatural user movement to generate a primary control signal to a video game.